The regulation and manipulation of building pressures is a complicated and difficult issue. The regulation of building pressures is not only difficult to accomplish but it is exceedingly difficult to accomplish when guided by prior art assumptions. Assumptions concerning building pressure regulation have been determined by the Applicant to be, by and large, inaccurate if not totally misleading. Applicant's U.S. Pat. No. 6,584,855 discloses and discusses a unique apparatus and method for measuring building pressure by understanding the relation of exterior pressure forces and other variables on the “skin” of the building and also on the resulting internal building pressure. Nonetheless, a myriad of additional misconceptions concerning internal building pressure have yet to be addressed by the prior art
One of the tasks of building maintenance personnel, building designers, building automatic control systems and building owners, is to properly control the internal temperature, humidity and air pressure of a building. Ideally, the internal air pressure of a building should be at equilibrium, and therefore, uniform between all of the floors, ceilings, walls, ceiling cavities, floor cavities and wall cavities, as well as all open areas, rooms and other interstitial areas of a building, so as to prevent the transmission of odors, gases, contaminants, or even humidity and temperatures, between the many floors of a multiple floor building. In other situations, internal building pressure control is critical for explosion and corrosion control and for protection during outdoor airborne biological, radiological, and chemical events and attacks.
A prevalent misconception exists that the only dynamic events that occur within the core of a building are temperature and/or elevator shaft related. The prior art has mistakenly thought that “chimney effect”, “warm air rising”, “buoyancy of air” or other scientific and not so scientific effects were the primary reasons that made buildings with more than one floor more difficult to temperature and humidity control. Others in the prior art have mistakenly thought that building elevator shafts caused pressure anomalies between the various floors of the building due to a “plunger” type of effect caused by the moving elevators.
While these explanations sound reasonable, Applicant has determined that they are incorrect. In fact, these explanations sound so reasonable and these effects seem so “uncontrollable”, and the experts in the field considered these temperature and elevator related explanations so satisfactory, that the observed problems have simply been ignored and left unsolved for the past one hundred years.
Applicant has determined that elevators and elevator shafts do not combine to create an effective “plunger” effect and that warm air rising does not actually produce enough force to move much air easily between concrete floors, for example. Applicant has determined, instead, that the ever varying and dynamic pressure relationships between the various floors of a multiple floor building, generated by many variables over the height of the building, is the primary reason that buildings with more than one floor are difficult to temperature and humidity control. It is these pressure differences that can pull germs, for example only, from a third floor patient room and cause them to precipitate out on the tenth floor, thus uncontrollably spreading germs throughout a hospital.
A prevalent MISCONCEPTION that must be clarified with this patent, is that “warm air rising between” the various floors of a multiple floor building, is a problem. Even as of today, ASHRAE still says that this is one of the PRIMARY reason air moves from the lower floors of multiple floor buildings, to the upper floors. The extensive applications of “FIRE CODES” which began in the early 1970's, “sealed” the individual floors from each other, effectively turning them into “INDIVIDUAL PRESSURE VESSELS”. The SLIGHT “pushing” pressure generated by the “buoyancy factors” of “warm air rising” is INSUFFICIENT to move air through the remaining holes, or even closed elevator doors.
The true cause of air moving from the lower floors of buildings towards the upper floors, is a DIRECT RESULT of dramatically higher speed winds impinging on the walls of the upper floors. EVERY DAY, OF EVERY YEAR. Plus, the wind continues to accelerate over the height of the building, increasing their effect. This increased wind velocity actually “sucks/pulls/exfiltrates”, MUCH LARGER amounts of air from the upper floors, than ANYONE thought.
In 1648 Blaise Pascal wrote the primary rule of pressure “any change in pressure applied at any given point on a confined and incompressible fluid is transmitted undiminished throughout the fluid”. The “air” within a standard multiple story building is our “fluid” and can be considered “confined” by the building's walls. The influences inside of a standard multiple floor building, even the TALLEST one in the World, are incapable of “compressing” the existing air column to any significant amount, due to the aforementioned FIRE CODES. ASHRAE suggest the opposite with it's use of “stack pressures”.
I ask the simple question, how can a multiple floor buildings with “sealed” FIRE floors, generate a “stack pressure”? Air in a multiple floor building can be considered “incompressed”. Air is “compressed” by the fans of the air handling equipment, which can add heat, but this same air as it exist on the various floors, is “incompressed”. So, as this SIGNIFICANT “negative” pressure influence is generated and “applied” to these upper floors, it is “transmitted throughout the” air of the ENTIRE BUILDING, regardless of the number of floors involved, or the applied FIRE CODES.
As this “negative” pressure influence generated on the upper floors of multiple floor buildings, seeks to reach equilibrium within the confines of the building “vessel”, it “sucks/pulls/draws” from the lower floors. The “negative” pressure generated, IS sufficient to affect ALL of the individual floors of the building, regardless of the applied FIRE CODES. As more and more air is “sucked/pulled/exfiltrated” from the upper floors, over height, the increasing “negative” pressures generated, in turn “sucks/pulls/draws” even more and more air from the lower floors. Another rule of pressure is “air will move from areas of higher pressure, towards areas of lower pressure”. These lower floors simply represent, the “source of least resistance” for air, to replace the air “LOST” from the upper floors.
It takes the DRAMATIC and DEEP “negative” pressures generated EXACTY as described, to “suck/pull/draw” air through even the smallest remaining cracks, between the floors and through wall cavities, floor cavities, ceiling cavities and ANY other interstitial space of a multiple floor building. NEITHER “warm air rising”, NOR “stack effect”, could EVER produce the building pressure problems that the Applicant has encountered. To COMPLETELY SOLVE a problem, one MUST FIRST COMPLETELY understand the problem. Up until that MOMENT, one is ONLY “treating” the SYMPTOMS of the PROBLEM. Which is EXACTLY what ASHRAE and ALL BEFORE ME are doing. TREATING SYMPTOMS. I offer the COMPLETE CURE for ALL of the “BUILDING PRESSURE” problems they are encountering. Applicant is the first to FULLY UNDERSTAND this “dynamic” situation, that occurs within EVERY multiple floor building. Thus, there is a need in the art for providing an apparatus and method which provides dynamic, responsive control of internal building pressure in buildings with more than one floor. It, therefore, is an object of this invention to provide an internal building pressure apparatus and method for obtaining the pressure relationships between the floors of a building with more than one floor and thereafter regulating the pressures as circumstances and individual needs require. Such apparatus and method must be able to account for any variable and arrive at an accurate pressure relationship for the individual floors of a building.